5 June 2002
If you are looking for something light and witty, hit the BACK button on your browser now. This could very well be the most self-deprecating thing I've ever written. If there are any typos or grammatical errors, that is because I was typing in a stream-of-consciousness way and didn't bother to re-read it, because I didn't want to get any more depressed by reading it again. I probably have forgotten events that have played an impact on my current situation that have happened within the time frame allotted. Well, so be it, and I may amend this waste of time, but otherwise, who fucking cares? History is written by the winners, and I SURE ain't writing history (which is ironic, seeing as how I was a history major).
OK, I surrender. I have decided that I am done fighting with the world, done trying to deal with everyone's fucking neuroses, everyone's egos, and everyone's me-first attitudes. I'm selling all my shit and moving next to a river in the middle of nowhere.
Let me tell you the long and sordid tale of how I got to this point from a position of relative happiness and security in 734 days. On 2 June 2000, my job at the time and I parted ways. I'm not going to say that it was COMPLETELY my fault, but I do accept a large percentage of the blame for what happened. Of course, by this time my personal life was going into the tank. So, my $1100 a week cushy bartending job had been replaced by... um, nothing. I spent three weeks out of work, summer being the worst time to look for a job in this shithole we call Phoenix, at least if you are in the restaurant business. I eventually hit up a friend of mine who was a manager at Houston's Restaurant for a service bar job.
Being a bartender in a real bar is to working at Houston's as having sex with a perky 19 year-old sorority girl is to getting fucked in the ass by a gorilla whose been given a bottle of Viagra. Yeah, technically they're both considered sex, but one is rather unpleasant. At the same time I began working with a liquor distributor as a merchandiser (a glorified stockboy), another job which I had inside assistance in getting. Neither job paid well - the merchandiser was seven bucks an hour, twenty hours a week, and the Houston's job was nine bucks an hour plus "tipshare," which was SLIGHTLY more than if I had just scoured the gutter for spare change on the way home from work. However, since I was having conflicts between the two jobs (not getting any sleep for three days a week), I decided to quit the distributor job. At this point, I have taken a 62.2 percent cut in my weekly income. For those of who who need to visualize exactly what that would be like, imagine if someone cut off 62.2 percent of your (or, if you are a woman, your boyfriend's/husband's) dick. A seven-incher is now a little over two and a half inches. Kind of inadequate, huh?
On 12 July 2000, I was working the service bar getting my ass pounded as usual when it was announced at 8:30 p.m. - in the middle of a shift - that Tim, my friend the manager who hired me, died of a heart attack. Well, there are few events in my life that I rank as "one of the worst days of my life," but that would definitely be one of them. I won't elaborate further on the subject. Draw your own conclusions as to just how fucking bad that sucked.
So, I began looking for a new job in August. The classifieds are usually the worst place to look for bar jobs, because any place that people really want to work don't advertise. In other words, if they're advertising for bartenders, it usually means that no one wants to work there. However, not to waste an opportunity, I applied for jobs from the paper. One was a "casual fine dining" restaurant in north Scottsdale called Michael's at the Citadel. I interviewed with the GM, was called back for a second interview, and hired. However, once again, there was a schedule conflict, and not being able to keep both jobs, I quit the gorilla ass-fucking at Houston's.
Now, pay attention, because the following will come up again later on. When I handed my resignation to the manager working expo (the line where the food comes out), he told me that I had to give it to Grayson (the GM). So, I told Grayson that I needed to speak with him. He was talking to Robert, a manager-in-training, who knew what I was doing. So, I sit down with Grayson and hand him the written notification of my resignation. He responded with a "no" and handed it back to me. I told him that he didn't have a choice, I had another job that I committed to, and I was giving my two weeks. Grayson asked why I was quitting. I responded with the reasons: (1) the job sucks balls, (2) I was asked if I wanted to work on the floor (wait tables), and when I said yes, was never asked about it again, (3) bar shifts on the patio were going to 19 year old kids who couldn't even spell Smirnoff, much less pour it, and (4) I didn't see anything changing for the better anytime soon. After our meeting, Grayson walked into the service bar and told me that he would give me Friday night on the patio if he knew I would stay. Too late, sorry, but thanks.
Got all that? Good. Now let's continue.
A month after I started at Michael's, I was making MAYBE a little more than I was at Houston's. Weekends were OK, but I could make nine bucks on a Tuesday night. The bar at Michael's is a pimple, an aberration, a holding pen for parties until their table is ready. It is probably one of the most beautiful bars I've ever seen, but no one knows it's there. And that's the intention. Michael, the little Il Duce Jr. that he is (then again, he's a chef, it seems to be in the training) didn't want the bar to be busy, because he didn't want it to detract from the dining room. That's great. Unless you're a bartender. Also a month into my Michael's experience, my wife and I split up. The sense of loss was replaced by a sense of loathing. I hadn't had a drink in six weeks at that point, and I made up for that by drinking just about every night for the year and eight months since then. As the year went on, the holidays rolled around, and the money got better. I was making around $700 a week in the bar. At the same time, two friends of mine were opening a bar in Scottsdale, and in return for helping them with their business plan, burning music CDs, doing their menu, etc., I was told that I would "have my pick of shifts." The name of the place was Hackers. PLOT POINT: keep this in mind as well.
On December 1, Hackers opened, and I wasn't asked if I wanted to work there, was never made an offer of bar shifts, or any shifts anywhere for that matter. However, they DID buy me a couple of Bud Lights in appreciation for what I did. Fuckin' thanks.
At the end of December, the girl who was the cocktail waitress on weekends (and worked the bar the two nights I had off) quit. She was replaced by a girl who worked the hostess stand, had never cocktailed before in her life, and didn't even drink. Needless to say, New Year's Eve was a fucking nightmare. By the middle of January I was fed up. The bar got no support from the management, since it sat on the second floor (and was the only thing on the second floor) no one wanted to go up there, and every time I ran out of something I had to go down the back way and fight with the kitchen staff for it. Plus I had to deal with a girl who screwed up orders on a regular basis so badly that it would have been easier if I did the whole place rather than having her there. Roger, the GM, talked me out of quitting then and there, and begged me to stay through season so he didn't have to find another bartender. "Season" usually ends after Mother's Day here. Well, at the end of May I was going to Boston to watch the Yankees play the Red Sox, so I decided that I would stay through May 25th. I gave seventeen weeks notice of my resignation. I thought that was rather nice of me.
At the same time, three friends of mine and I had put together a business plan to present to potential investors for our own bar and restaurant. To be perfectly honest, it's a great plan. If you want to see it, you can download it by CLICKING HERE (03/13/2003 - actually, I took it off. SO you can't CLICK THERE and see it. Sorry, I've exorcised that demon.) We have since presented it to twelve people who expressed interest, were told it was a sound plan, and when it came time to put up the cash, they vanished.
So, May 26th comes and I fly to Boston for a week, have a good time (by myself), and returned June 1st. Since my birthday was the 3rd (and, coincidentally, still is) I figured I would start on the 4th, after the traditional birthday boozing. I couldn't have possibly picked a worse time to be out of work if I had planned it. It was the worst summer for bars in five years according to distributors. One week turned into two, into three...
At the end of June, a friend of mine who was living in Cheyenne, Wyoming, moved down with his girlfriend. They were staying at my house (which was fine, because I needed the $400 a month in rent they were paying), and like me, were looking for a job. They both went to Houston's to apply. I went with them because we had gone to other places as well, but I had no intention of returning to the Nazi-like regime that is Houston's. While they were filling out applications, I went and talked to one of the managers I knew, and jokingly asked him if they were looking for help. Fuck, it's been five weeks, any port in a storm, I thought. Brad almost peed himself. Yeah, that'd be great if you came back, we were sixty shifts understaffed this week, blah blah blah, I'll tell Grayson, he'll be back in two days.
So a couple of days later I went back, met with Grayson, and he told me yeah, sure, you need to fill out an application and go through the process. Which I did. Went through first interview (with Shane, a dweeby little no-personality dipshit) and Brad (the one I talk to the first time) the next day. Brad told me that he called Michael's and they gave me a "glowing" recommendation. So, all I had to do was meet with Grayson, I get a schedule, start training. So, the next day I met with Grayson. He told me that he remembered there was a "uniform issue" the last time that I worked there (there wasn't), and that he didn't feel comfortable putting me on the floor, but he maybe could get me in the service bar, he's talk to the bar manager. Keep in mind that the service bar uniform is the same as the server's uniform, so any "uniform issue" I would have had... do I really need to explain this to you? When I got home, I called Brad and told him, "Tell Grayson to take the service bar job and shove it up his ass." Brad was understandably surprised, and told me to use his name when I went somewhere else to apply. Remeber when I told you before about the first time I quit Houston's? I went from being offered the patio bar job to a problem employee with a "uniform issue" in the drugged-up mind of Grayson.
After applying at almost a hundred bars, restaurants, insurance companies, banks, etc., I finally landed a job at an Irish bar in Tempe. Thirteen weeks out of work. That job lasted for three and a half months. It was December, and I figured I had a better chance of finding a job than I did in the summer, and the three $50 day shifts I was working weren't cutting it. There were other reasons as well, too numerous to go into. I spent four weeks out of work, and then was hired as a catering chef for a company in Phoenix, and also as a bartender at a bar in Moon Valley (which sounds a lot more attractive than it really is). One day before going in to work (this is now April 2002 - almost home, kids) I got a message on my cell phone saying that "my services were no longer needed." So, that job, which was about $800 a week, went bye-bye. I was never given a reason, and no one that I worked with knew why either. Yes, I was John Robinsoned, I was fired on my answering machine.
However, I had finally picked up a couple of day shifts at Hackers, which now went from being extra income for vacation to my primary employment. The day I was fired I told the owner and he put me on the kitchen schedule a couple of days a week. Now, I'd still been doing things for Hackers between the time we last left them in this story in December 2000 and now. I did their menus, promo flyers, and some computer work. In January, Wes (an owner) wanted me to start doing their bookkeeping duties as well. I was told that he was going to make a "financial commitment" to me, since I had done so many things for them for beers in the past. This was fine with me, because I'd rather be paid money than in beer any day. So I got a check for $250 to set the computer up and get everything ready to go. That was January 26. This is June 5. I haven't seen a dime since then.
The bar shifts were supposed to be some sort of appeasement for the fact that they weren't paying me for doing the books, and now they were my primary employer. Fast forward to last week: the girl who worked the bar Tuesday through Sunday was on her last leg. No one, either on staff or that came in, liked her. She's five cards short of a straight. I assumed that after she was fired, which was going to be Sunday, I'd at least get a couple of those shifts. That may seem somewhat heartless and vulture-like, but I'm broke, and it's not like I had a hand in his - she did it to herself.
Monday comes around and Wes told me I had the day off. So, preparing for a good day of birthday libations, I went to see if the schedule had been posted. No, they're still dealing with some issues. Am I working tomorrow? No, take tomorrow off. Now, I know that I'm in the kitchen Thursday and Friday nights, but the bar schedule isn't done. So Tuesday comes (that's yesterday) and there's STILL no schedule. But, there's a new girl behind the bar. Well, that's fine, I'll probably have Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. Now it's Wednesday, after I was told that I was bartending Wednesday day, I'm in the car on the way in when Wes calls me and asks me if I'm coming in to do some stuff in the office "and get paid, not just waste some time." Well yeah, I guess, sure... WHAT THE FUCK? So I go in, and there's a schedule, and I'm not on it. But guess who's working this morning? And Saturday and Sunday? Joey, the dumb bitch who was supposed to be gone. So I'm fuming, but at least I figure I'm getting some sort of a check for doing the office stuff, as I deduced from the "and get paid, not just waste time" comment. Well, two hours later I had the checkbook balanced, the monthly profit and loss statement done, and some graphics stuff, and I walked out with exactly the same amount of money I had when I walked in. And no explanation of why I wasn't on the bar schedule. So I called Wes when I got home (and calmed down a little), and he told me it was because business was slow and there weren't enough shifts to go around, it was nothing I did, it wasn't anything malicious. Well that's fine, that would explain why you hired another bartender and still had Joey on the schedule.
In 1999, I made $52,770 bartending at DJ's. In the two years since I've been gone, I MIGHT have made that much. It's June 5th, my car insurance, power bill, and rent are due in the next six days, totaling $1,212. I have sixty bucks in my wallet, fifty in the bank, a paycheck tomorrow for about $200, and no bar shifts in the foreseeable future. I've basically run my credit straight into the ground over the last year, to the point that they can come and take me away, I don't care. I'm fed up with going to bar after bar, restaurant after restaurant, and being told that they're overstaffed. I'm sick of going to banks, insurance companies, etc. looking for work and being told that they are looking for someone with relevant experience, despite the fact that I'm smarter than 94 percent of the people that work there. I'm tired of the phone ringing with Chase, MBNA, and Bank of America on the other end asking for money I don't have and haven't had for a year. I'm sick of my mom telling me that I just have to stay positive, I'm a smart kid, even though I've been turned down more times than a bed at the Hilton. I'm sick of everyone I know telling me I should be doing more with my life than bartending, but no advice how someone with 11 years of bartending experience is supposed to get out of the business and into something else. I'm tired of being told that there are people interested in our plan, and then being told that their money is tied up in a Uruguayan agricultural mutual fund that can only be accessed the sixth Monday of every January in a leap year.
Supposedly I'm a great guy, but I can't get a date in a women's prison with a fistful of pardons. Supposedly I'm brilliant, but I can't get a job. Supposedly I have so much to offer, but no one's interested right now. People call me sarcastic. I say I'm honest. I simply say the same things that everyone else is afraid to. I express my feelings instead of smiling, nodding, and walking around like an automaton.
I'm tired of the dishonesty that goes on in every minute detail of everyone's life. No one you meet is who they are, it's a costume, it's all bullshit. We are all patting each other on the back simply so we can look for a good place to stick a knife. The concept of living as a community has been replaced with a society of maggots gnawing at whatever they can and fuck everyone else. Agent Smith was right in "The Matrix": humans are a virus. We don't try to exist in a symbiosis with nature, we can't even exist in a symbiosis with each other.
I dread waking up in the morning. I have no desire to do anything anymore. I've spent the last two years going from one misery to another, regressing farther and farther into myself, to the point that a coma sounds like a good idea right now. I am sick of being used, shit on, ignored, kicked around, and left as an afterthought in everybody's plans, everybody's lives. I'm sick of all the bullshit going on in the world, all the bullshit in my own life, and the bottomless pit that I have fallen into over the last two years. I have absolutely no faith in my abilities, I second guess myself at every turn, and I have no reason to do otherwise. Every decision I've made since 1999 has been wrong, I'm on a downward spiral into nothingness, and I don't have the know-how, the resources, or the desire to stop it. Filling the car with gas is now a major financial expenditure rather than a simple fact of life. Now I know how the Waco Kid felt in "Blazing Saddles":
Sheriff Bart: Man drink like that and he don't eat, he is going to die.
Waco Kid: When?
And on that note, I'm going drinking. If I don't see you again, I hope that some of the things on this website made you laugh. Let the bastards know they won.
